After Her, page 31
It is important for me to say here that unlike my fictional detective, Detective Gaddini was never discredited or taken off the case. But it was in another jurisdiction that the Trailside Killer was ultimately arrested and brought to trial, where he was found guilty of five murders and sentenced to the San Quentin State Prision in California. Not long after this, while still in his forties, Robert Gaddini died. Though the official cause of death was lung cancer, it is the belief of his daughters, and the rest of his family (his former wife, Martha, daughter Dana, and son, Frank) that he never recovered from the toll taken by this case.
What first moved me to pursue his daughters’ story (or at least, to invent one containing a pair of sisters who witness the cost, in the life of their detective father, of his failure to apprehend a killer) was a single event in the life of the real-life older sister, Laura Xerogeanes. Well into adulthood, but haunted still by the mark the killings had left on her family, Laura chose to visit the man known as the Trailside Killer on death row. It was the story she told me of the need she felt, years after her father’s death, to look into the eyes of the killer as an adult woman, and her ultimately unsuccessful goal of extracting from him the confession he had withheld for thirty years, that gave me the idea to write this book.
As one who makes her home in Marin County, in an era when so few children experience the freedom to engage in a single activity not scheduled and programmed into the calendar, I was transported by the picture of a childhood (so unlike my own) in which the children (girls, even!) were left to create their own world of wild and occasionally dangerous adventures. I was moved by the sisters’ devotion to their deeply flawed and deeply human father, and most of all, by their devotion—which continues into their adult lives—to each other. At its core, that is the story I wanted to explore in these pages: the story of two powerfully bonded sisters.
I offer humble thanks to the team at William Morrow, most particularly Emily Krump and Ben Bruton, who shepherd my books into publication—and into the hands now holding this volume: those of the all-important reader. Above all, I offer highest respect, supreme gratitude, and affection—once again—to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, who demands more of me than I think I have to offer, and causes me to discover that it was there after all. I have never worked harder for any editor or felt happier to be doing so.
Finally, to the man who offers the wisest counsel, even when not practicing the law, and listened to me in the middle of the night a few dozen times at minimum—when I felt the need to run by him one more possible scenario for the outcome of this case, one more idea for how a pair of girls, ages eleven and thirteen, might succeed in vanquishing a serial killer—and never fails to reassure me that I will get through the dark woods and out into the sunlight: my love always to Jim Barringer.
About the Author
JOYCE MAYNARD has been a reporter for the New York Times, a magazine journalist, a radio commentator, and a syndicated columnist, as well as the author of seven previous novels, including To Die For, Labor Day, and The Good Daughters, and four books of nonfiction. Her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, has been translated into fourteen languages. Maynard’s bestselling novel Labor Day is being adapted for film by Academy Award–nominated director Jason Reitman and stars Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. Maynard makes her home in Mill Valley, California.
Also by Joyce Maynard
Fiction
The Good Daughters
Labor Day
The Usual Rules
The Cloud Chamber
Where Love Goes
To Die For
Baby Love
Nonfiction
Looking Back
Domestic Affairs
At Home in the World
Internal Combustion
Credits
Cover photograph © by Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“My Sharona.” Words and music by Douglas Fieger and Berton Averre. Published by Small Hill Music (ASCAP)/Eighties Music (ASCAP), administered by Reach Music Publishing, Inc. (ASCAP)/Wise Brothers Music LLC. Copyright © 1979. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
AFTER HER. Copyright © 2013 by Joyce Maynard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-225739-0
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062257413
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Joyce Maynard, After Her
